Fionnuala tensed as if the pensioner had clattered her across the face. She urged a smile to her lips as she forced the tea upon Mrs. Ming.
“I’m afraid not, naw,” she said. “I left me copy at home.”
Mrs. Ming gazed down in uncertainty at the swirling tea. Having spent eighty years clawing out a life for herself and her eleven children in the brutal grimness of life in the Moorside—with a war raging in the background for almost thirty of them—Mrs. Ming was no fool. Although Fionnuala now had Flood as a surname, Mrs. Ming was only too aware the tea had been made by the lone girl in the notorious Heggarty clan from Creggan Heights, and that the daughter of deceit had married up to a less violent family. Mrs. Ming and her brigade often clucked about Fionnuala at the Senior Center between cards on bingo night; Fionnuala’s reputation for petty thievery had marked her out as someone who couldn’t be trusted. Mrs. Ming kept a wide berth from Fionnuala when she ran into her at Sunday mass, and the sight of the sinner mouthing words of praise to the Lord filled the old woman with contempt. Fionnuala Flood had a bold-faced cheek entering St. Molaug’s not only every Sunday, but all Holy Days as well, and now here she was blackening her sitting room and forcing an odd-looking tea at her!
But with the sweet little daughter beaming up lovingly at her side, Mrs. Ming considered, maybe she was being too harsh on the woman. Surely the little girl couldn’t be that good of an actress at such an early age? And the younger child was behaving himself. Causing her cat grief, to be sure, but didn’t her own grandchildren do that? Perhaps she should reconsider and show some decent Christian compassion and a bit of faith that Fionnuala had somehow changed. Stranger things had happened, for example the Troubles ending and the British paratroopers pulling out and leaving the town in peace. Yes, Mrs. Ming thought with a decisive nod of the head, people could change. She grabbed the saucer and took a sip of the steaming tea.
As the barbiturates took effect, Mrs. Ming’s head bobbled, and finally she nodded off.
“About time,” Siofra muttered.
“Right, wanes!” Fionnuala said. “Let’s get werselves up into the loft, and sharpish. The aul one’s only gonny be out an hour or so.”
The children scampered up the stairs towards the trapdoor of the attic, Fionnuala panting behind them. The Titanic on her special satchel would soon be sinking.
CHAPTER 29
HER MOTHER WAS IN BED with another of her many bad turns. Catherine took her chance to obey Siofra’s demands. Frigid with fear, she slipped her ear against the front room door. She heard the drone of some gardening program, the snoring. She pushed the door open. Her father was passed out on the couch, the day’s newspaper crinkling as it rose and fell atop his chest. The girl crept across the carpeting, avoiding the two planks she knew creaked. Her little body trembled as she towered over her father’s slumbering form.
Above the couch, Jesus glared down at her in disappointment from the Bleeding Heart portrait. The angels that floated on wispy clouds around His suffering body cast her looks of disdain from on high. He died for your sins, they seemed to be warning wee Catherine, and now you’re going to throw it all away and plunge yourself into the depths of depravity.
Catherine’s eyes welled with tears as she knelt at the side of the cracked leather. Her right hand shuddered through the air as it made to invade the private sanctum of her father’s trousers. She slipped the tips of her sweaty fingers into the warmth of his pocket. Catherine grew more queasy, more squeamish, and more resentful of Siofra’s demands the deeper her fingers crept into the warmth. Her fingertips brushed past the rumpled pound notes, past the half-eaten roll of breath mints. As her fingertips alighted upon a pound coin, she was sure she was violating the man who had raised her to be respectful, pious and true.
“I’m being forced to sin,” she whispered feverishly to herself. “Forced to sin, forced to sin...”
She felt no relief as she located the round hard metal of her father’s keyring, only a heightened sense of wrongdoing. Inspector McLaughlin grunted in his sleep and adjusted his leg, Catherine whimpering as her hand was taken along for the ride. She had to half-turn to avoid her fingers slipping out of his pocket. She wound her fingers around the keyring and tugged, tugged, tugged it up the length of her father’s leg. The tinkling of the keys as they slipped out of his pocket sounded like the tolling of the bells of St. Molaug’s at some old thief’s funeral.
Heaving silent pants of misery, Catherine grappled the keys and clutched them firmly in her little fist. She slowly and quietly rose from her father’s feet and tiptoed back across the carpet
Her father grunted and sputtered, and she turned around, frozen with fear. But he didn’t wake. She couldn’t help but glance at the portrait above the couch. The angels seemed now to be condemning her with their glares, letting the little girl know she would now never join their ranks in a heavenly afterlife. Catherine shuddered and left the front room to continue her journey on the road to Hell. Next stop: her daddy’s study, and all the while her mind screaming with sin.
CHAPTER 30
FIONNUALA THOUGHT HER plan brilliant: if she kept her hands off the high-priced items on show in the house proper and ransacked the attics, it would be months, if ever, before the theft was discovered, as how often did pensioners scale the ladders, afflicted with osteoporosis as they all were? By that time, Fionnuala and her one-stop OsteoCare visit would be but a memory (if even that, in some of her clients’ muddled minds).
Fionnuala followed the children up the ladder and popped her head into the darkness. She tugged out her flashlight and shone it into the cobwebs. Seamus was gnawing on asbestos as if it were cotton candy.
“Och, ye’ll ruin yer appetite, ye daft gack,” she said, smacking it away from his tongue. “Youse, be on the lookout for anything of value.”
“How about this, Mammy?” Siofra asked, her little frame struggling to haul a typewriter from the floor.
Fionnuala was transfixed, shoving the child to the side and digging her claws into the treasure, then she remembered the technological transformation that had introduced those computers into everyone’s home.
“Och, catch yerself on, wane!” she spat. “We kyanny get tuppence for an aul piece of shite like that.”
“Mammy! Mammy!” Seamus wailed from a corner, holding up a coffee percolator. “This looks wile dear!”
Once again Fionnuala’s eyes widened with excitement, then narrowed with scorn.
“Useless, youse wanes are! Them looks like swanky dishes over there. And there be’s some rags. Wrap them up, youse.”
While the children were packing the dishes, Fionnuala poked at the corroded coils of a space heater in a corner and was struck with the niggling sensation that something was wrong with the intelligence she had gathered. Those women who said Mrs. Ming was rolling in it must have been out of their minds; this attic was a graveyard of obsolete technology. If she took anything from it to the market, she would struggle to make bus fare to Creggan Heights, let alone fund a trip to Malta.
She scrabbled through a pile of dog-eared album covers, pausing for a moment at Kenny Rogers Greatest Hits. She pulled it out of its sleeve, but saw it was scratched. It could have fetched a pretty penny at the market. She flipped further through the albums, and read with interest the track listings of the Barry Manilow live collection, The Bodyguard soundtrack and the Sheena Easton greatest hits, then realized the LPs were too big to fit into even her bag. Although it would have given her great pleasure to listen to “Can’t Smile Without You” and “I Will Always Love You” and “Sugar Walls” again after so many years, she felt her heart sinking and her frustration rise, and it wasn’t because she couldn’t locate Bucks Fizz’s Gold Collection.
“Take them dishes and shove em in me satchel. And get to work on them Christmas decorations over there and all.”
Next to the albums was a pile of VCR tapes. She brightened momentarily, then realized it was all DVDs nowadays. She shuffled through ET and Robin Hoo
d: Prince of Thieves and Sophie’s Choice. Then her eyes alighted on a workout video, Ab Fab Abs and Boulder Buns...Eight-Minute Workouts to a New You! She looked down and realized she had let her body go to pot. The only time her legs got a workout was when they were sprinting to catch a closing elevator.
“I think I might give this a go,” she mused. She made sure Siofra and Seamus weren’t looking, then slipped it into her bag. The video would be cheaper than joining a health club, especially as she was stealing it. How could she not find eight extra minutes in a day? She slid a copy of Ghost and then Fame into her bag as well, and already felt the pounds slipping away.
“Gather up them things and shove em in me bag,” Fionnuala said, glancing at her watch. “We need to get werselves home, and quick. That aul one’s sure to reach consciousness soon, and the spuds be’s ready for dinner.”
CHAPTER 31
CATHERINE CREPT UP the stairs, knees trembling, tears welling. She held the key to her daddy’s study aloft. She glanced into her parent’s bedroom and saw her mother tangled in the bedclothes, her head buried face-first in the pillow. She inched past the opened door and reached her daddy’s study. He sometimes took his work home, and she knew the door was always kept locked as he was shielding her and her mother from the violence of the crime scene photographs. She had caught a glimpse of the walls of the study through the ajar door once, and had almost retched on the spot at the photos of carnage.
She unlocked the door and staggered through the wallpaper of violence, gripping her stomach in displeasure, forcing her eyes to avoid the horrific scenes and focus on her daddy’s safe. It was in a cabinet to the left of the desk, right under a well-thumbed Bible. Catherine approached it with dread. As she knelt before the safe, the unease coursing through her, she felt a shadow pass across the opened door. She squealed and whipped around.
Her mother stood there, hair matted, eyes strangely glazed as they had always been of late, a basket of dirty clothing balanced on her hip and a spatula in her hand.
“Oh, hello,” Concepta said.
Catherine was horrified her mother had caught her in the private study, but she didn’t even seem to be certain who she was speaking to, let alone where.
“L-looking for me Pokemons, just,” Catherine said through gritted teeth.
Lying! Another mortal sin! It was indeed a slippery road to damnation.
“Wee dote,” her mother said. She would have patted the girl’s head had she not been clutching twenty pounds of filthy underwear. Catherine smiled at her mother until she wandered off down the hall, then she shoved the key in the lock of the safe, reached in and scrabbled through the documents and girlie mags until she found the press pass. There was no relief, only a sense of shame. She cursed Siofra Flood as she clicked the safe shut. But at least she wouldn’t be bullied again at school now. Would she?
Before she hurried downstairs to replace the keys in her daddy’s pocket, she made a quick trip to the bathroom.
Inside, Catherine flung open the medicine cabinet, pawed through the many prescription bottles that had started to proliferate there as of late and grabbed the toothpaste. She spent ten full minutes attacking the length of her tongue with a toothbrush to remove the black spot of lying she was sure tarnished it.
CHAPTER 32
THEY WERE ASSIGNED the mixing and grinding machines. Dumping inedible fish remnants into a chute twenty feet above the factory floor was a thankless task, but Aggie found at least two things to be thankful for: the cheeks of Paddy’s backside flexing inches from her nose as they climbed the ladder. Far below them, the rest of their crew plodded to the conveyor belts, which would spit out fish feed to be packaged and wrapped and hauled onto pallets.
Reaching the catwalk, Paddy and Aggie grabbed a tub of fish remains and began emptying the slop down the chute. Paddy hummed “Gloria” (Laura Brannigan’s, not Van Morrison’s). He didn’t know what was worse: the stench of murdered fish, the sight of the vats of viscera, or the feel of Aggie’s leers.
Paddy and Aggie worked quickly as a team, and seven vats soon disappeared down the chute. That would keep those below busy for hours. Paddy took out his flask of whiskey and guzzled down. He offered Aggie a swig, and her face lit up as if he had flashed her.
“We do break, yes?” she asked, her glove wiping the whiskey and fish scales from her chin.
“Aye, I’m gasping for a fag,” Paddy said.
They climbed down the ladder and rested against the cold steel of some machine. The women on the conveyor belt followed their lead—if an Irish national could skive off, so could they—and milled around, pulling out cigarettes and food from pockets and nodding towards Aggie, flaunting her friendship with a foreigner. They hissed into each other’s ears and flung daggers their way.
Aggie unwrapped a greasy paper bag and thrust some dumpling-looking things under Paddy’s nose.
“Pierogi!” she said proudly through the cigarette smoke. “You try.”
Paddy couldn’t imagine which shop in Derry she had bought them from; they looked like they had been shipped over on the cheap by her mother.
“Yum!” Aggie promised. “From my country. Make more big. More man.”
She grappled what she could find of his bicep through the padded overalls and gave it a squeeze that lingered. Paddy was embarrassed not to take one of the creepy foreign things, so he did and chewed it fearfully.
“You sell...?” She threw fantasy darts with her hand.
Paddy had almost forgotten that desperate night at the pub. He mimed carrying the dartboard, opening the door of the pub, ducking fists, falling to the sidewalk, being kicked, and grasping the air for the stolen dartboard. The more violent the pantomime became, the angrier Aggie got.
“Bad! Bad men!” she snarled. “Bad!”
The conveyor belt women pointed and laughed at the idiot foreign man writhing around on the fish residues. Aggie turned, and her tongue rained a torrent of rage-fueled Polish upon them. Paddy spat the half-chewed vileness on the floor. The woman with the cleft chin and the one with the wart slunk back to the conveyor belt, but still Aggie’s shrieks threatened to drown the Meatloaf shuddering the speakers. An especially hard-faced one had the nerve to snap something back, and Aggie singled her out with a jabbing finger and a further onslaught of abuse. Others came to Hard-faced’s defense, and hands shoved and caps flew and bodies pressed against steel.
I’ll see if I can’t get transferred to a different group the morrow for me own safety, Paddy mused, nudging the pierogi under some fish scales with his boot. He was scared of Aggie’s reaction if she discovered he hadn’t cherished every bite. Yer woman there be’s one mad cow, a bunny boiler if ever I clamped eyes on—
His cellphone vibrated in his pocket, and he rounded some pounding pistons to take the call. Fionnuala’s bark in his ear was soothing by comparison: “Paddy! Me head be’s spinning! Ye’d not believe the flimmin things I’ve just been told!”
“Calm down, love,” he said, alarmed at the panic in her voice.
“I was down the Top-Yer-Trolley shopping, and before ye chunter on about us not having the funds, we was in desperate need of staples like loo roll and salt, especially the loo roll. We’ve held out long enough, sure. Anyroad, I ran into Ciara by the meat and cheese counter, and I was telling her about wer Padraig’s evil squint and all the distress it’s been causing me, and she told me it’s not an exorcism that wane needs but a pair of specs! Would ye believe it? It happened to her nephew Liam and all, apparently. Och, Paddy, I’m mortified! Somehow I think wee Padraig being in the clutches of Satan be’s a kinder fate. Wer Moira be’s the only one of the family what got specs, and look at the shape of her. Ciara agrees; not a soul speaks to her Liam-no-mates since he got em. I kyanny stand them glares no longer, but, so I’m hoping I’ve yer blessing to haul him down to the eye doctor the day.”
Paddy couldn’t believe he was hearing correctly. The last time Fionnuala had asked for his approval before acting was when she needed
him to check out her betting slip down the dog races the year before.
“If that be’s what the wane needs, put him out of his misery,” Paddy said.
“And don’t forget we’ve that fancy free drinks do at the school the day after the morrow. I’m putting the finishing touches on me outfit, and ye better be there on me arm or there’ll be hell to pay. I don’t want ye pleading ye forgot after a few pints at the Rocking Horse. Och! I clear forgot, ye’ll hardly go drinking with themmuns down at the plant as ye’re on one side of the picket line and themmuns on the other!”
She rang off. Paddy re-rounded the pistons as the foreman materialized and bellowed into the sniping, poking melee: “What the bleeding feck is going on here? Catfighting when youse should be grafting hard! Get yerselves back to the conveyor belts! And put them fags out! Fags out! Work!” O’Leary mimicked these actions with his hands, irritated they couldn’t understand something as simple as ‘fags out.’ They glared at him as they rearranged their outfits into a semblance of normality and shuffled back to their positions. Aggie stood by herself, her makeup a fright.
Paddy marched up and said, “Och, them bloody laws of the EU! How in the name of feck are we expected to work ten hour shifts without the comfort of a fag? Next ye’ll be checking wer breath for the whiff of alcohol!”
O’Leary tugged a laser from his belt sagging with new gadgets and pointed it at a fish vat. Then he dealt with Paddy and Aggie.
“And why isn’t the two of youse up on the catwalk?” he barked, laser in mid-lase. “Look at the state of this floor! A flimmin tip, so it is!”
Paddy and Aggie looked at the wet fish slime, blood, gut contents, scales, skin and oil.
“Hose down them aisles, or youse’ll receive a written warning!”
“Och, for the love of—”
The Irish Lottery Series Box Set (1-3) Page 48